BP's Global PR vs. BPGlobalPR

The first disaster was the oil spill. The second was BP’s public relations. Since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank more than a month ago, the company’s response has ranged from awkward to awful, causing offense all over again with inappropriate statements and tone-deaf tweets. In the past few weeks, a prankster/activist has joined the fun by establishing a fake BP Twitter account, with posts that can be dry enough to be confused for the real thing. Its popularity is soaring, with exponentially more followers (116,000 and counting) than the real thing (about 10,000). And sadly, their parody tweets are sometimes indistinguishable from the real things.

Can you tell the difference? Take a look at the list below and see if you can pick out which attempts at damage control are from BP—and which are fake.

Correction (posted June 9, 2010): The statement, “Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp," was originally attributed to the wrong BP official. Randy Prescott made the statement, according to a report in The Lens.